Radical Innovation
How Mature Companies Can
Outsmart Upstarts
ESTABLISHED COMPANIES CAN
PRODUCE RADICAL, GAME-CHANGING INNOVATION. HERE'S HOW.
HOW MANY BIG BUSINESSES have
pioneered the technologies and business models that now dominate e-commerce, personal
computing, biotechnology, and wireless telecommunication? Answer: hardly any. The problem
is not that executives fail to recognize the need to infuse their organizations with the
kind of model-busting innovative capabilities of agile startups. It's a lack of
understanding of what to do and how to do it.
But now, this groundbreaking
book reveals the patterns through which game-changing innovation occurs in large,
established companies, and identifies the new managerial competencies firms need to make
radical innovation happen. The authors define a radical innovation project as one that
delivers a product, process, or service with either unprecedented performance features, or
with familiar features that will enable market transformation through significant
performance improvements or cost reductions. These projects are nurtured within the
established organization, not skunkworks. They are not concerned with exploiting current
lines of business, but with exploring entirely new ones.
Based on evidence from a
five-year, real time study of twelve radical innovation projects within ten major
corporations including General Electric, IBM, Nortel Networks, DuPont, and Texas
Instruments this book addresses seven managerial challenges large companies face in
creating and sustaining radical innovation:
(1) dealing with radical
ideas in the "fuzzy front end"; (2) developing new models for project
management; (3) learning about unfamiliar markets; (4) working through uncertainty in
the business model; (5) bridging resource and competency gaps; (6) managing the
transition from radical project to operating status; and (7) engaging individual
initiative.
The authors, experts in a
variety of areas such as entrepreneurship, R&D management, product design, marketing,
organizational behavior, and operations and project management, distill a comprehensive,
interdisciplinary approach to mastering each of these challenges, from the
conceptualization of viable ideas to the commercialization of radical innovations.
Designed to push the envelope of thinking about the most significant challenge facing
large companies today, this important book offers a revolutionary new paradigm for
long-term corporate success.
Authors are all faculty
members in the Lally School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute.
260 pages